Clean The Dirty Bit That Is Stopping Chkdsk

Hmm it might not be a good thing as it is picking up that there is something wrong.

I could tell you to disable this process from happening but that would not be dealing with the problem if there is one. So Lets try something. When you are logged in…

Clean The Dirty Bit That Is Stopping Chkdsk

To clear the NTFS dirty bit on a drive/partition, try this. The drive you want to clear, is usually c:

XP- Click on Start, All Programs, Accessories, Command Prompt
Vista & WIndows 7- Click on Start, All Programs, Accessories. Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator

Type fsutil dirty query yourdrive: so fsutil dirty query c: if you’re having a problem with drive c:. This queries the drive, and more than likely it will tell you that it is dirty.

Next, type chkntfs /x c:. The /X tells Windows to NOT check that particular drive on the next reboot. Now manually reboot your computer, it should not do a chkdsk and should take you directly to normal Windows login.

Once Windows has fully loaded, bring up another Command Prompt and enter chkdsk c: /f /r.

Reply Y for yes if you want this to happen on the next boot. This should take you through 5 stages of the chkdsk scan on the next boot and will unset that dirty bit.

Be patient as this can take an hour or more depending on the size of the hard drive or partition.

Once booted back to Windows, open another Command Prompt and query the dirty bit again by entering fsutil dirty query c: and Windows will confirm that the dirty bit is not set on that drive.

Check Chkdsk Settings In Registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

In the right hand pane, double click BootExecute.

The default value of the key is autocheck autochk *

* means every drive is checked for consistency. Just add /K:C at the end before *. /K switch will disable autocheck on C: drive at Windows startup. So the final value should look like this:

autocheck autochk /k:C *

If you want to add more drives, the key should look like this: (disabling C and D drives)

autocheck autochk /k:C /k:D *

If you want to restore everything to default, just replace the key with the default one i.e.